I occasionally follow the online musings of a once-celebrated evangelical Christian blogger named Jen Hatmaker. Maybe you’ve heard of her? She came by her fame honestly; she hosted a rather charming blog about the foibles of Christian parenting in the 21st century, and she went on to become an author and sought-after speaker on the evangelical woman’s conference circuit. And then… then she came out with support for the full inclusion of LGBTQ Christians in the church.
From the public response, you might have thought that Jen had just crucified Jesus anew. Christian publishing houses refused to publish or promote her books, agents stopped representing her speaking engagements, and she was pilloried on social media.
While Jen Hatmaker was saying all of the right things, she was a sought after and well-compensated commodity. A slave girl, you might say, to a certain sector of the Christian-industrial complex. But when she could no longer submit to the spirit that caused her to write supposedly family-friendly blogs within a church culture that condemned LGBTQ children of God, her economic value all but disappeared.
Sound familiar? The 16th chapter of the Book of Acts—which we have been hearing from these past two Sundays—uncharacteristically features the stories of two noteworthy Philippian women. Recall that last week we were introduced to Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. And as Canon Matthew mentioned in his sermon, that meant she served the imperial class. She was wealthy, independent, and—to the degree possible for women of her time and place—free.
In contrast, the nameless young woman that we heard about today was anything but free. She was not only a slave, she was also possessed by a spirit. She had a gift of divination—that is to say, she was something of a successful fortune teller—but the gift wasn’t really hers. She was held hostage to the speech of the spirit, even when she was saying things that were true. “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation,” she cried out, day after day, until Paul finally ordered the divining spirit to leave her.
Notice that it wasn’t the slave girl who Paul was annoyed by, but rather the spirit that possessed her. The casting out of which caused an economic loss to her owners, and likely damaged her own reputation. But she wasn’t the only woman whose public standing was put at risk by the ministry of Paul and Silas. We don’t know what ultimately happened to the slave girl absent her valuable spirit, any more than we know what happened to Lydia the purple cloth dealer after her conversion. But I’m willing to bet that joining the cult of a subversive rabbi wasn’t the best business decision for a haberdasher to the empire. Freedom is free, but it sometimes comes with a cost.
The Apostle Paul, who landed in jail as a result of his exorcism of the slave girl, had a thing or two to say about freedom. “For freedom Christ has set us free,” he wrote in his letter to the churches in Galatia. “Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” In this case he was talking about the temptation to make an idol of adherence to the law—a frequent theme for Paul—but he was also speaking out of the ancient Biblical understanding God as liberator. Freedom is the exodus of the people enslaved to Pharaoh, freedom is having a homeland in which to be an ethical community and a temple in which to worship God. And sometimes, more courageously, freedom is following a leader who was imprisoned and crucified for the sake of love.
What holds us hostage? What is our prison? If you are here with us today I’m willing to bet that you are not currently incarcerated. But perhaps you have been. I was, briefly, for protesting the movement of nuclear weapons through my community many years ago. But I’ll confess that my current captivity is of the more mundane variety. I want to protect my status. I want to avoid sadness and shame. I’m also conscious of those potentially enslaving temptations, and I pray about them and test their boundaries daily. Do they keep me from doing what I am supposed to do, from loving and affirming whomever am called to pastor?
Unjust incarceration and slavery are abhorrent. But I suspect the greater risk for most of us is the spiritual cost of unexamined captivity. People living in self-imposed bondage tend to feel threatened by the freedom of others, and indeed may well threaten the freedom of others. Witness our complex relationship with symbols like the statue of liberty and the border wall. We are not called to live as prisoners or slaves, the Bible assures us. But when we find ourselves tempted to use our freedom to imprison others, we might as well be our own jailers.
I wish I knew what happened to Lydia or the slave girl of Philippi, what they did with their hard-won freedom. But I do know what happened to Jen Hatmaker. Her freedom of speech came at a cost, but having paid that price she had nothing more to lose. So now she’s on a mission to share the gift with others. Last week she wrote—
“I learned something incredible as a grown up adult:
The denominations or churches that elevate men and diminish women, that harm or exile LGBTQ Christians, that protect abusers and shame their victims into “private forgiveness”, that create panels of all white men to tell the rest of us how unbiblical social justice is, that peddle shame and guilt and sorrow…we get to leave.
There are endless faith communities that operate out of equality and honor and grace. There is no actual door to the prison. Just walk on out. They will still be fighting the same fights inside that cell when you are dead, so might as well choose freedom and joy and life and light in your faith story.
Don’t be your own jailer. Walk on outside and come see how the rest of us love Jesus and each other. You will be so welcome. Jesus is worth his salt; he set us free for freedom’s sake. You can choose bondage or to “keep trying to talk them into equality” or keep fighting for a seat at the kids’ table. Or you can just walk outside in the fresh air. Come on out.”
I’m not saying that walking away from church is the way to get free. But if a religious or political or any other persuasive message threatens to enslave you or others, it might be. Sometimes freedom means walking away from the oppressive speech, the nasty twitter feed, the big house, the next more demanding job, the expectations of friends and family, the substances we abuse, the resentments we nurture, or even the self-critical spirit that possesses us. If you don’t know what holds you captive, I hope you do yourself the favor of finding out. Notice where you feel shame, resentment, and especially anger at the freedom of another. You can’t exorcise an enslaving spirit or break out of a prison or if you don’t know what it is.
Naturally, I hope that some of those walking out of restrictive faith traditions walk into ours. It’s gratifying to be part of a Christian community that practices radical welcome. But to recall the exodus story, freedom is actually a journey, and not a destination we’ve arrived at. Or may ever fully arrive at; not at Trinity or anywhere else. It takes intention, patience, courage, and a good measure of grace to get free and then to stay free.
This is a week when I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the community of free women. Yesterday two woman were elected to the Episcopate in the diocese of Michigan and El Camino Real. And on Friday our church calendar remembered Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth. So even though we are not privy to their subsequent stories, I like to imagine Lydia and the slave girl meeting each other at some house church in Phillipi. I like to imagine them savoring the words of Jesus, rejoicing that the glory that God has given him, he had given to them as well. And I like to imagine we—their spiritual offspring—leaping for joy at their courage.
